Welcome to The Debate. Today, we are dissecting
a concept that is, well, it's simultaneously
the holy grail of the business world and an absolute
minefield in academia. Leadership. It is the
ultimate buzzword, isn't it? I mean, it's an
industry worth billions in books and seminars
and coaching. Yet, if you ask five experts to
define it, you'll probably get six different
answers. It's slippery. It is slippery, but it's
also fundamental. And that ambiguity brings us
right to the central tension we're unpacking
today. The question isn't just, what is good
leadership? The question is, where does it come
from? Is leadership a coherent set of, you know,
innate traits, the great man theory, where specific
individuals are genetically or psychologically
wired to lead? Or is that just a romantic myth?
Is leadership actually a social process defined
entirely by the situation, by the followers,
and by the environment? In other words, does
the person make the times, or do the times make
the person? I'm going to take the position that
the person matters, fundamentally. I'll be arguing
for the trait and attribute perspective. My stance
is that leadership is rooted in stable, individual
characteristics. History is shaped by people
who possess a specific constellation of traits.
intelligence, charisma, grit that allow them
to step forward when others step back. And I'll
be taking the situational and constructivist
side. I'm going to argue that what we call leadership
is often a projection. It's a fluid process that
is entirely dependent on context. I believe that
the leader is a story we tell ourselves to make
sense of complex dynamics and that the environment
is what actually dictates who rises, not some
innate virtue. Then let's get into it. And I
want to start with history. Because for centuries,
this wasn't even a debate. If you look at Thomas
Carlyle's work from 1841, Heroes and Hero Worship,
the logic was crystal clear. Carlyle argued that
the history of the world is essentially the biography
of great men. Which is a very 19th century romantic
way of looking at things. It feels a bit like
reading a mythological text rather than, you
know, science. It is poetic, certainly. But it's
also observational. Carlyle identified that certain
individuals possessed specific talents, physical
characteristics, and skills that allowed them
to bend the arc of history. He wasn't just talking
about kings, he was talking about prophets and
poets and commanders. And while the language
of divine right has faded, the data supporting
the individual has actually gotten stronger in
the modern era. Has it? Because I recall trait
theory taking a massive beating in the mid -20th
century. Academics essentially threw it in the
trash bin. They did for a while, but it made
a massive comeback. In the 1980s, modern meta
-analyses re -established it with empirical rigor.
We aren't talking about divine sparks anymore.
We're talking about the big five personality
factors. We now have statistical evidence that
traits like extroversion, conscientiousness,
and openness to experience are reliable predictors
of leadership emergence. Emergence being the
key word there. Getting the job, not necessarily
doing it well. Well, we'll get to effectiveness,
but you can't ignore the pattern. When you look
at a Steve Jobs, you see a measurable level of
determination and adaptability that exceeds the
norm. When you look at Mother Teresa, you see
high integrity and diplomacy. This is the leader
attribute pattern approach. It's not just one
trait. It's an integrated totality. Some people
are simply built with the hardware to process
social complexity and drive outcomes. It's a
constellation of attributes that you can't just
manufacture out of thin air. See, I hear that,
and I hear a desire to simplify the world. You're
quoting Carlyle, but I'd point you to Herbert
Spencer or even Karl Marx. Their counter -argument
was that the times produced the person, not the
other way around. If Steve Jobs had been born
in an agrarian society in the 1600s, He wouldn't
be a tech visionary. He'd probably just be a
difficult farmer who argued about how to stack
hay. But he would still be the one leading the
other farmers. The context changes. The drive
doesn't. That drive is internal. I disagree.
In the late 1940s, Stogdell and Mann conducted
massive reviews of the literature, and they found
something that contradicts your innate hardware
theory. They found that people who are leaders
in one situation are not necessarily leaders
in others. You take a brilliant military general,
someone decisive, authoritarian, tactical, and
you drop them into a creative design agency where
the goal is abstract thinking and collaboration,
and they often flail. If leadership were a stable
trait like height or eye color, it should transfer
anywhere. It often doesn't. I'd argue that's
a skills gap or perhaps a domain knowledge gap,
not a lack of leadership potential. I think it's
deeper than that. I think we suffer from what
Meindl calls the romance of leadership. As humans,
we're terrified of randomness. We hate the idea
that organizational success is often luck or
market forces or timing. So to make the world
feel manageable, we attribute massive control
to the person at the top. We invent the great
man because the alternative, that chaos rules
and nobody is really driving the bus, is just
too scary. That's a cynical take. You don't think
individual competence drives results? You think
it's all just people projecting their hopes onto
a figurehead? I think we confuse competence with
visibility. Have you heard of the Babel hypothesis?
I have, but refresh our listeners. It's one of
those studies that makes you question everything.
It's a fascinating, albeit depressing, finding
in social psychology. Studies show that leader
emergence, who gets picked a leader group, is
highly correlated with the sheer quantity of
speaking time, not the quality, not the intelligence,
just the amount of words spoken. If you talk
a lot, people perceive you as leader -like. That
doesn't sound like innate virtue to me. That
sounds like we promote whoever likes the sound
of their own voice. That might explain some bad
metal management, I'll grant you that. But you're
ignoring the biological imperative. You can't
talk about leadership without talking about evolution.
It's not just about who talks the most. It's
about survival. Go on. Van Vugt and Ahuja define
this clearly. Humans are social species, just
like ants, bees, or chimpanzees. We naturally
select leaders because it solves coordination
problems. We need a focal point to survive threats.
But we aren't ants. I mean, ants are genetically
programmed drones. Humans have agency. We can
choose not to follow. We are primates, though.
Wrangham and Peterson wrote a book called Demonic
Males that links human leadership directly to
chimpanzee behavior. It's ugly, but it's real.
It's about violence. territoriality, and competition
for the chief male spot, there is a biological
drive for hierarchy. We are hardwired to look
for the alpha who can protect the tribe. That's
not a social construct. That's DNA. When the
group is threatened, we look for the strongest
protector. Okay, but you are cherry -picking
your primates to fit a specific narrative. How
so? You're focusing on chimps because they fit
the dominance and violence model. But look at
the bonobo. There are second closest genetic
relatives sharing almost the same amount of DNA
with us as chimps do. But noble society is matriarchal,
it's peaceful, and they unite behind an alpha
female who leads through coalition building,
not through violence. It's a valid counterexample,
but chimps are generally considered the closer
proxy for historical human aggression and warfare.
But it proves that biology isn't destiny, that
dominance equals leadership model isn't the only
biological path. And speaking of biology, look
at the hormones. You mentioned the alpha. Van
Voo found that while testosterone correlates
with dominance, it does not correlate with effective
leadership. Is there a functional difference
in a crisis? Sometimes you need dominance to
get things moving. There is a massive difference.
Dominance is forcing people to do things through
fear or coercion. Leadership is influencing them
to want to do things. If biology were the sole
driver, the highest testosterone individual would
always be the best leader. The data says they
are usually just the most aggressive person in
the room. Those are two very different things.
Fair point. I'll pivot then. Let's move away
from the brute force biology and look at the
psychology of perception. Because you're right,
it's not just about muscles, it's about the mind.
This leads to implicit leadership theories. These
are the prototypes we carry in our heads? Exactly.
We all have a cognitive template of what a leader
looks like. Intelligence, trustworthiness, assertiveness.
When an individual displays these traits, specifically
authenticity, they are granted influence by the
group. It's not just babble. It's emotional intelligence.
Which is a trait. Ideally, yes. Leaders manage
moods. They transmit positive affect through
what's called emotional contagion. If a leader
is optimistic and resilient, the group performs
better because that energy is psychologically
contagious. You cannot fake that over the long
term. You have to have that emotional capacity.
A depressed or erratic leader crashes the group's
performance purely through that psychological
transmission. I'm going to challenge the idea
that you can't fake it. Have you looked at neo
-emergent theory? Lay it on me. Neo -emergent
theories suggest that leadership is often an
impression formed by information management.
Essentially, it's PR. It's not about what you
are. It's about what you project. You think it's
all smoke and mirrors? Let's look at a classic
great man, Lord Nelson. British naval hero, won
the Battle of Trafalgar. Historians know that
Nelson was obsessed with his image. He would
often write his own versions of battles and send
them back to England before he even arrived,
just to ensure the newspapers printed the story
he wanted told. That's savvy marketing, but he
still had to win the battle first. He still had
to command the fleet. True, but the heroism was
a construct he actively built. And this obsession
with emergence, with who looks and sounds like
a leader, is dangerous. It creates what researchers
call absentee leaders. I've heard this term.
These are the empty suits? Exactly. These are
people who have the traits to get promoted. Maybe
they are extroverted, tall, and confident. But
once they're in the role, they psychologically
check out. And here's the kicker. Research shows
absentee leaders are actually worse for an organization
than toxic leaders. Worse than toxic? That seems
like a stretch. A toxic boss ruins your life.
A toxic boss ruins your life, but you identify
the problem immediately. You can bond with your
coworkers against them. With an absentee leader,
someone who emerged based on traits but doesn't
engage, the incompetence is silent. It destroys
role clarity and creates ambiguity. It proves
that having the traits to get the job tells us
nothing about your ability to actually do the
work. I think that's a failure of selection,
not a failure of trait theory. But let's look
at that work. You claim it's all situational.
But I would argue that specific behaviors yield
results regardless of the situation. There are
universal tools that work. Such as? Reinforcement
theory. This is behavioral science 101, BF Skinner
stuff. Empirical research covering the last 20
years suggests that leaders who effectively use
positive reinforcement can boost performance
by 17%. That is a measurable, universal outcome.
It doesn't matter if you're running a coffee
shop or a Fortune 500 company. If you reward
good behavior, you get more of it. That is a
skill the leader possesses. Incentives work.
I grant you that. But that's management, not
necessarily leadership. Then let's talk about
transformational leadership. This is the gold
standard, pioneered by Bayes and Riggio. We're
talking about leaders who provide vision, intellectual
stimulation, and individualized consideration.
They don't just manage transactions. They move
followers beyond self -interest. You cannot tell
me that a leader who inspires a team to achieve
the impossible is just a product of the situation.
They are the catalyst for the situation. I'm
not denying that inspiration happens. I'm denying
that one style works everywhere. I would comment
with the Fiedler contingency model. This is the
idea of fit over virtue. Precisely. Fiedler argued
that there is no ideal leader. It depends entirely
on the favorability of the situation. If you
are in a burning building, an extreme, unfavorable
situation, you don't want a transformational
leader asking you about your feelings or trying
to intellectually stimulate you. You want a task
-oriented authoritarian to scream exit left now.
Agreed. In a crisis, command and control works.
But if you use that same authoritarian style
in a creative marketing meeting, an intermediate
situation, you destroy morale. You need a relationship
-oriented leader. The person is just a variable.
They only work if the equation around them is
right. So you view the leader as a puzzle piece.
Yes. And leader -member exchange theory, or LMX,
takes it even further. LMX proves that leadership
isn't a broadcast from a great man to the masses.
It's a series of specific one -on -one relationships.
The dyad. Right. Leaders naturally create in
-groups, the people they trust, the teacher's
pets, and out -groups, the people they manage
by formal authority. If you are in the in -group,
that leader looks amazing to you. If you're in
the out -group, that same leader looks incompetent.
So who is the real leader? It depends entirely
on who you ask. It's a social transaction, not
a personal characteristic. But even in LMX, the
leader is the one initiating that structure.
The leader decides who is in the in -group. That
implies agency. The leader is still the architect
of those relationships. Or the follower grants
the legitimacy. Which brings me to the ultimate
variable you were underestimating, culture. I
don't ignore culture. But I believe leadership
traits transcend. Competence is competence. I
strongly disagree. The very concept of what a
leader is is culturally bound. In Confucian societies,
the ideal is the scholar leader, based on filial
piety and benevolence. In other cultures, it's
paternalistic, a father figure who literally
controls the personal lives of the workers. Those
are just different flavors of the same dish.
They're still figures of authority and direction.
They are fundamentally different dishes. Look
at gender perception. There was a fascinating
study where they asked women to envision a leader.
German women almost exclusively imagined a male
executive. Indian women, however, were much more
likely to imagine both men and women. That speaks
to societal bias, not the essence of what leadership
is. It speaks to the fact that the trait of leadership
is actually just a reflection of the follower's
bias. If you don't fit the follower's cultural
mold, you cannot lead them. If you walk into
a culture that values humility with your extroversion
and charisma traits you say are universal, you
might be seen as rude and arrogant. The power
lies with the follower's perception, not the
leader's personality. I see the logic, but I
have to push back on the idea that it's all relative.
There is significant research into global leadership
competencies. In a globalized economy, things
like cognitive complexity and global business
savvy are required whether you are in Berlin,
Bangalore, or Boston. The problems are universal,
so the skills to solve them must be too. Required,
perhaps. But are they sufficient? I would argue
they are essential. And consider the alternative.
You talk about situational leadership as if the
group can just handle itself. But look at laissez
-faire leadership, the hands -off approach. Research
consistently shows that in leaderless groups,
performance suffers, satisfaction suffers. Because
people hate ambiguity. Exactly. Most people prefer
to be led. They need direction to reduce uncertainty.
If the situation were all that mattered, groups
would self -organize perfectly every time. They
don't. They wait. They wait for a leader to step
up. Or they wait for someone to take the blame.
No, they wait for vision. They wait for someone
with the grit and the intelligence to cut through
the noise. Or they wait for the person who talks
the most, the Babel effect, to tell them what
to do. We are circling back to the start, which
suggests we're reaching the limits of the debate.
But I think we've highlighted the complexity
here. It's not a simple black and white issue.
We have. And here's my closing thought. We have
spent centuries looking for the great man, and
I think it is a dangerous pursuit. It ignores
the role of luck, it ignores the Babel effect,
and it ignores the overwhelming power of the
situation. When we romanticize leadership, we
give individuals credit for outcomes they didn't
control. A leader is often just a surfer riding
a wave they didn't create. And I will maintain
that while the wave matters, some people drown
and others surf. You cannot ignore that individual
differences, intelligence, emotional stability,
drive, consistently predict who stays on the
board. Leadership is, as Earhart and Jensen described
it, an exercise in language that creates a future
that wouldn't have happened otherwise. It is
an act of individual will. Perhaps the middle
ground lies in the modern integrated psychological
theory. The move toward personal leadership.
Exactly. The idea is that before you can manage
a situation or lead the followers, you must understand
your own psychology. You have to know your traits
to adapt to the context. I can agree with that.
Whether born or made, the effective leader is
one who is conscious of both their own wiring
and the environment they are operating in. Indeed.
So, to our listeners, we leave you with this
question. Are you following a person because
of who they are? Or are you just responding to
the situation you find yourself in? Something
to think about next time you're in a meeting.
Thanks for listening to The Debate.